Includes bibliographical references (pages 475-494)
Part One : Habsburg bureaucracy : inertia versus reform. From Baroque to Biedermeier -- The emperor and his court -- An empire of bureaucrats -- Economists as bureaucrats -- Legal theorists -- Austro-Marxists -- -- Part Two : Aestheticism at Vienna. Phaeacians and Feuilletonists -- Musicians and music critics -- Devotees of the visual arts -- Critics of aestheticism -- -- Part Three : Positivism and impressionism : an unlikely symbiosis. Fascination with death -- Philosophers of science -- Philosophers of language -- Philosophers of dialogue -- Freud and medicine -- Freud and Vienna -- Freud and his followers -- -- Part Four : Bohemian reform Catholicism. Marcionists at Prague -- The Leibnizian vision of harmony -- Franz Brentano and his followers -- Last exponents of the Leibnizian tradition -- Aristocrats as philanthropists -- Social Darwinists as subverters of the Leibnizian tradition -- -- Part Five : The Hungarian cult of illusion. Institutions and intellectuals in Hungary -- Utopians from Hungary -- Sociology of knowledge : a Hungarian truism -- Hungarian psychoanalysts and film critics -- -- Part Six : Soothsayers of modernity. The gay apocalypse : retrospect and prospect